Pretty Thing (Naughty Things 1)

“Oh,” Aiden says. “You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“She died a couple years back. Jack and Marie Lesser live here now.”

“Oh,” I say, stopping in my tracks. For some reason this hits me hard. Maybe because I didn’t know and I should’ve. Should’ve shown up for her funeral, at least. Or maybe because it’s a symptom of why I’m standing here in this alley with Aiden, on my way to his apartment, when I should be at my parents’ house celebrating my twin brother’s life.

“What’s wrong?” Aiden asks.

“I dunno,” I say, letting go of his hand and turning my back to him. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this?”

“What are we doing?” he asks.

I turn back to him and shrug. “What are we doing?”

“Hmm,” he says, rubbing his jaw with his hand. He does that a lot. It’s something I like about him. And usually there’s some stubble there so there’s a very faint, very soft, scratching noise.

But not tonight.

“We could get drunk,” he offers. “We could get shit-faced drunk and talk about old times.” He pauses for a moment, then adds, “Have we ever gotten drunk together?”

I shake my head. “No,” I say. “Kyle… you know.”

Kyle would never let me get drunk in front of him. In fact, after we graduated high school and went our separate ways, it was never the same again. It was never the three of us anymore. It was those two, and then me, off to the side.

“Yeah. OK. You want me to drive you home?” he asks. Smiling, but for the first time I can ever remember, there’s no teeth. Not a real smile.

“Yeah,” I say. “That’s probably a good idea.”

He nods. He understands. Then sighs and looks at my shoes in my hand. “You should put those on. Lots of stones in the alley.”

I look down at them too, then back at him. I shrug. “How about another ride?” I say. “For old times’ sake?”

He says, “Hmmm,” because he knows damn well that he was never the one to carry me on his back. Kyle was. “Yeah, why not.”

He turns his back to me and I jump on, laughing again. The sad memories fading a little.

I feel guilty about that, but you know what? Kyle should feel guilty too. For liking that stupid rock crawling. For making a mistake. For getting crushed to death by a goddamned Jeep.

See, Kyle? I say silently. This is what you get for leaving me.

Because in those few moments it takes to walk down the alley to the back door of Rock Crawler Custom Jeeps, I change my mind again. Because if I get in Aiden’s car and let him drop me off at mine, I will probably go back to the city and never see him again. It’s a stupid idea because I’ll come home for holidays and stuff and Aiden’s parents live right across the greenspace from mine. But I’ll never really have another reason to see Aiden again. I’ll never be able to stop by the shop and steal secret glances at him while pretending to be there to talk to Kyle. Not that I’ve done that over the years, but it was always a possibility and now it’s not.

“You know what?” I say, once Aiden sets me down so he can find his keys.

“What?” he says, only half listening as he sticks the key in the lock and opens the door.

“I changed my mind. I would like to get drunk.”

This time the smile does have teeth. And maybe in more ways than one. “Yeah?” he asks. And I feel like this has been our conversation the whole night. Feeling things, then forgetting things, then feeling things again. Not really certain we know what we’re doing, but then again, not really caring.

I nod anyway. “Yup,” I say, so we can change the dialog from uncertainty to certainty. “Get me good and drunk, Aiden Edwards. Because tonight, of all nights, I need it.”

I need you too, I don’t add. Because that feels like crossing a line and I’m not ready to go there.

Yet.

“I can’t think of a single fucking thing I’d rather do right now, Kali Anderson. Now be careful, this place is a fucking mess.”

And then he takes my hand and doesn’t turn on the lights. Just leads me through the shop, pretending to carefully pick his way around massive tool chests, and Jeeps up on lifts, and all that other stuff that comes with a garage like this.

But there’s a part of me that knows better. Knows that this place is spotless and he knows it just as well in the dark as he does in the light. That he just wants to keep hold of my hand and lead me.

Of course, I don’t say any of that. Because that’s what I want too.

His apartment is on the second floor and to get to it you have to go down a long hallway away from the garage. If we’d come to the shop from the front we’d have entered through a separate entrance on the outside. But we didn’t.